Palentologists Find Hoard of Fossils, even a whale's skeleton, near Va. Quarry

March 14, 2011

News Article: The Washington Post

By Eric Niiler, Published: March 14, 2011

Hidden behind an old rock quarry south of Fredericksburg is a nondescript sandpit that opens a window on the world of 14 million years ago, a spot where dolphins frolicked and sharks hunted. Today, teams of student and volunteer diggers are pulling out a jackpot of fossils sandwiched between layers of bluish-gray rock.

"We don't know how they got here," said Alton Dooley, a paleontologist at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, as he chipped away at the clay surrounding a newly uncovered bone. Dooley and other scientists say this is one of the biggest fossil sites east of the Mississippi - staggering in both number and diversity of species. "The most striking thing is the sheer number of bones and teeth that are packed in such a small area. In 20 years, we've only excavated about 4,000 square feet, and we've pulled out tens of thousands of specimens."

Dressed in muddy camo pants, sweatshirt and ball cap, Dooley ponders the riddle of what is called the Carmel Church quarry site. How did all these animals end their lives in this one small patch of once-submerged ground? Was there a cataclysmic event, such as a landslide or a toxic red tide that killed them all? Maybe it was an ancient whale graveyard, or a calving ground? Or is the treasure trove the result of some slow geologic process?

Since he started coming here in 1990, Dooley's crews have uncovered just a small portion of the exposed sandy slope. He leads digs here several times a year, sometimes with volunteers from local colleges or the natural history museum. Last week, it was four college students - plus Dooley's wife and 15-year-old son - who joined him to spend six days of their spring break in the dirt and mud.

‘Pretty crazy'

The technology for examining fossils may have advanced, but the process of digging them out remains slow and painstaking. Bundled in stocking caps and fleece jackets against a pre-storm chill, the students knelt on foam pads, working away at the foot of a 15-foot wall of sediment. They were doing paleontology the old-fashioned way - some more enthusiastically than others.

"I have friends on cruises and at Mardi Gras this week," said Jordan Hutton, a 19-year-old sophomore at Roanoke College. He poked the hard, compact soil with a small dental pick. "I'm pretty jealous."

He acknowledged, though, that at least he'd come away from spring break with something besides a hangover.

"I've always liked science, but not enough to study it intensely," said Hutton, whose major is art history. "Here I'm learning about the patience and time that it takes to do it. The way they put together a skeleton is like the way I put together a painting."

In just a few days of digging, Hutton had found two fish vertebrae, part of a whale and some carbonized wood. Hutton said he would take the wood back to his biology class, where he hopes to examine it under an electron microscope to figure out what kind of tree it was.

Nearby, Laura Kellam was excavating with a chisel, a garden spade, a dental pick and a paintbrush. "To look at the different layers of the sediment," said Kellam, an environmental science major at Roanoke College, "and to think that 14 million years ago this was underwater here in Virginia is a pretty crazy concept."